Socrata is pleased to welcome the Founding Director of the Office of Performance Accountability for the city of New Orleans Oliver Wise to its team as a Digital Government Principal.

With a goal of helping his peers in government better use data as a strategic asset, Wise will offer guidance on bringing analytics to government program outcomes and scaling data-enabled solutions throughout state and local government.

Hear from Wise about his experience in government, his work at the city of New Orleans, and why he chose to work at Socrata.

Working in city government, Wise saw firsthand that city employees were working hard, but under-utilizing an abundant asset that could help them solve the challenges facing their communities: data.

In the video above, Wise shares a story about a tragedy in New Orleans where a house fire killed five residents. Inspired to prevent future fatalities, Wise’s team used data to figure out the areas of the city that were most in need of smoke detectors. Their work was recognized by the Fire Chief, the city’s firefighters, and the larger community when a smoke detector they installed using this intelligence helped save 11 lives from a fire later that year.

Wise will be working with clients from governments of all shapes and sizes to help them figure out how to solve problems using data. He will also work with the Socrata product team to make sure products align to the needs of governments, as well as the larger civic community.